Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own imagination and foolish sentimental heart. Anything else is someone else's property so any donations of your hard earned cash should be mailed to them not me. I don't want your money (lucky really since I never get it). I do this because it makes me smile to hear people tell me I made their day a little better.

Author's Notes: Like I said - sequel. If you haven't read 'Maybe' then I suppose this will still make sense. They're like Ray and Ben though - Good in their own right but much better if you put them together.
I should thank everyone who sent feedback asking for this. I'm not used to the responses or the attention but it feels good so I try to give my public what they want.
Everyone who asked for the morning scene be patient it's on its way.
As always feedback will be read, printed, framed, cherished and put in my box marked 'Treasure'.

Story Notes: It's two in the morning now and I'm a very tired person. Yes, my coffee even has M&Ms in it for inspiration and the extra caffeine boost.
For this reason you should expect this to be nothing but a mindless ramble. If you want deep, go swim in the lake known as michigan. If you want an actual plot I suggest you go watch T.V.
There's a program about a mountie and a chicago cop that I hear is particularly good.<g>

This story is a sequel to: Maybe

When I first awake, before I open my eyes, I am caught off guard by a faint weight pressing on my ribcage and a patch of warm breath against my shoulder. Foolishly, I almost jump out of my own skin. My experiences with the so-called `morning after' are ridiculously limited and I blink to acclimatize my eyes to the darkness. Looking down at him, I can see the traces of a smile on his face, even from this awkward angle and I find myself unable to do anything but smile back.

He's sleeping and I don't blame him. It's earlier in the morning than usually even I dare to rise, but today I can't seem to slip back under the veil of sleep. The hazy afterglow period appears to have worn off and although I'm exhausted, I'm wide awake now. I haven't slept well for days, and now it has increased threefold as I am plagued by the alterations in my relationship with the man lying beside me. Alright, I concede, `plagued' isn't quite the right word. In truth I have been in limbo somewhere between elation and blind terror.

He frightens me in a lot of ways I hadn't realized until I got closer to him. He's a striking, volatile creature, somewhere between wild and tame, and that in itself unnerves me. Sometimes I fear what that wildness evokes in me. I was unused to the intensity of it and I was never sure how long it would be before my iron clad control gave way. I suppose we discovered that last night. I had thought it would catch him off guard - what he found when my defences came down - It didn't. There was a laugh and a sparkle of triumph in his eyes. I smile to myself. Like I said ... he always was unpredictable.

Ray's world is so different to mine. Ray has his own unique rhythm. It draws at people and makes them want to be closer to him, pulling at them until they move with it. That's why we work so well together I suppose, and why our friendship succeeds. I needed him, more than I'd care to admit to his face. I'd lost my own rhythm, in a place that I don't belong, friendless, surrounded by people who don't accept me en masse. Ray accepted me. He offered out his heart and his friendship and his world to me on a silver plate. What could I do but accept?

I don't think I could ever understand this complex individual. He's divergent and contradictory in so many ways. He claims to put his neck on the line for no-one and yet he throws himself in front of a bullet for me when we are little more than strangers. A bullet that could have just as easily headed for his skull, instead of his protected torso. He's confusing to me, enough to keep me intrigued from minute to minute. I don't mind that I don't understand him sometimes. One can never know everything, and what I do know .... I love. That's enough.

There are things he doesn't know about me too. Perhaps given time we shall both learn, and perhaps not. It doesn't matter, we connect and as long as we remain connected the small things are irrelevant.

I can't help but marvel at my entanglement with this person. It doesn't surprise me that I should love him. After all, he's brought such fire and energy and vivacity into my life I should be a fool to back away from it instead of embracing it. Ever since that first full body hug he's brought more skin contact and dizzying proximity than anything I've experienced ... how could I succeed in holding him at a distance? He has such an unsettling way of getting under my skin and making me want him to be there. I don't know how to do anything but fall for him, and so I didn't fight it when it came. When my devotion to him became something more than natural, I accepted it. When I found myself needing to hear from him, I tolerated it. And when he imposed his world upon me, drawing me into it ... I did more than tolerate or accept. I began to crave it.

Knowing that I needed him and telling him were two very different scenarios. I wonder absently if my emotional cowardice would have allowed me to take that extra step. It shames me to admit the answer is probably no. I have many weaknesses, far more than I think the world at large sees. But then, people have a remarkable gift for seeing what they expect to be true, or what they want to be true. I may have exceptional eyesight, hearing, and a gift for retaining large amounts of mostly useless trivia, but when it comes to matters of the heart I occasionally feel I'm a step behind the rest of humankind. Ray forced me to catch up.

Gratitude I suppose is one of the emotions pouring through my pleasure -warmed veins. He made the first move and for that I shall be eternally thankful. It compelled me to make the second, the third and, if I remember rightly, the fourth also. He laughed at me and my newfound momentum, saying that if he'd known I'd be so enthusiastic he might have `made a move' on me long ago. I almost died at that, screaming inwardly on my own stupidity, and mourning wasted time. It must have showed on my face, too, because he kissed my closed eyelids and told me it didn't matter now. He was right too, it doesn't. We have all the time in the world.

Sentimental as I am, I touch his hair, wanting to know if I was dreaming how soft it was. Surely it's impossible for something to be so soft, yielding and compliant while managing to remain outwardly resilient and defiant. Funny, I realize, almost exactly like Ray himself.

I lay my head back against the pillow and begin to thank my lucky stars (individually and by name) that I've seen the softer, sweeter side to Ray's nature. I hope he knows that now I've found this way in my foot is firmly in the door. I won't be giving him up any day soon. I can be quite resolute when I find something worth persevering for. It is a trait that Diefenbaker has informed me is particularly unattractive.

When my fingers graze over the hair at the base of his neck he stirs. I think for a moment he will wake but he simply shifts position, his arms curling tighter over my abdomen and his head burrowing into my arm as though retreating from the cold. It's not cold temperature-wise but I don't' think that matters. I know instinctively that any separation - no matter how small in distance - would chill me to my bone now ... just when I've finally struck warmth.

Silent, contemplative, sated and content, I wait for the sun to rise. I won't sleep now, with the day so near and the imminent intrusion of reality just below the horizon. Instead of trying to force slumber upon my awakened psyche I simply brush my lips over the soft sleep-indulged skin of Ray's forehead, cheeks, then jaw, and smile at the knowledge that the weekend begins today.

Perhaps ... my decadent side murmurs enticingly ... perhaps reality could wait another couple of days after all.

End Feral Serenity by LaAmelia: beatitribbitbiteme@hotmail.com

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